Emmitsburg

Emmitsburg, town, Frederick county, northern Maryland, U.S., situated near the Pennsylvania border 23 miles (37 km) north-northeast of Frederick. Settled in the 1780s as Poplar Fields or Silver Fancy, it was renamed about 1786 for a local landowner named Emmit (sources disagree on his given name). The first American chapter of the Sisters of Charity was founded there in 1809 by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), the first native-born American to be canonized (1975) by the Roman Catholic Church. The building in which she established (1810) the first parochial school in the United States is preserved, and her tomb, in a ... (100 of 205 words)